"Chase the Sun" by Melissa Struhs

Hello again Bloggers! I hope that everyone had a wonderful break over the Easter school holidays, right now the Gold Coast is in the middle of the Commonwealth Games fever and that means that all of the locals are staying off the roads, maybe creating at home or finding something else to stay occupied. 

That is exactly what our family will be doing as you read this and no doubt that means lot of fresh new photo's to work with. Often when I begin a project I usually start by grabbing some mini print images and look through my chipboard stash, there is always an unusual piece that catches my eye and usually this is when I start to add in neutral style patterned papers and cardstock. I like to piece it all together before I start adding my Colour Blast products.

I first began with a thin laser cut chipboard set of waves that were in 3 separate pieces, they were inked with a navy coloured chalk ink

and covered with a heavy coat of Just Blue Colour Embossing Powder. These were heat set and popped aside for now.

While I was digging through containers of embellishments, I found stamped circle images on white cardstock that had been leftover from another project. Using a powder blue ink, I stamped a script stamp onto those shapes

and embossed them with Singin the Blues Colour Embossing Powder. It added a well needed detail to the start of my embellishments.

There were also wood veener dots in a variety of sizes that had the same colour added to them.

Because I had patterned paper and cardstock planned out ahead of time, I knew exactly where a stencilled grunge border could be positioned. Lately, I have been using a bit washi tape to hold it the stencil firmly while I spread the Colour Paste.

Deep Water helped bring more of the bold teal colouring that was needed. I also repositioned it another section of my layout to highlight the patterned paper Mandala.

Here are some of the elements close up...

the scripted circles and the grungy stencilled frame are simple elements but combined with a traditional style of scrapbook layout can still look quite textured.

Thanks again for stopping by the blog,

Till next time,

Mel.